Uplift

Another really enjoyable and interesting week…and I get paid for doing this!

On Tuesday I was in London at an excellent NCVYS Youth Strategy Group at which there were presentations by senior people at the DfE about their forthcoming policy paper on Youth. I must confess I was not aware this was in progress, but a lot of work has been done already and published. Details are at: positivefor.youth@education.gsi.gov.uk.  The second discussion subject was work on Social Finance by the Michael Young Foundation, indicating the scale of opportunity an interest in SF. The point is that whilst contractual arrangements will continue between the sector and local authorities (the binary arrangement) there also needs to be a triangulation with the SF sector. NCVYS to their great credit are setting up a retail fund derived from the Big Society Bank to enable youth projects to be financed. NCVYS are showing great leadership in the sector nationally.

I then went to a Community Foundation Surrey business planning awayday which was again fascinating and reinforced the messages from the Young Foundation. The Community Foundation already give £600,000 pa in grants to the sector in Surrey and have a target of getting to £1 mill grants in 2015, so I am delighted that we have their Chief Executive , Wendy Varcoe coming to  our Open Forum next Tuesday evening (see website for details).

Yesterday morning I met with folks from Bourne CYI, a member organisation doing great work in the Farnham area, and we had a discussion about how they might come together with others to form a more consolidated offer to external social financiers. They are based at the very fine St Thomas Church in Farnham – an uplifting morning….

….Which continued with a detailed discussion with the County Council’s Garath Symonds about aspects of the current tender that are out. It presents opportunities and challenges for the Surrey Youth Consortium

We realized that Surrey Youth Focus, and Surrey CC are doing innovative work, so I am inviting the DfE civil servants down to a joint briefing session about our work.

Personal disclosure: Off to a Readers (lay preachers)  Conference on Saturday, so my spiritual uplift will continue!

Enjoy whatever you do this week-end.
Mike